The Undisputed Origins of Nick Vermicelli
by JohnnyLurg
Summary: A fictionalized account of Craig Bartlett, the creator of Hey Arnold's relationship with his real-life brother-in-law, Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons


**The Undisputed Origins of Nick Vermicelli:**

**A Play in One Act**

_(focus on a studio/house in Seattle, Washington, 1994. CRAIG BARTLETT and his brother-in-law MATT GROENING are discussing their animation pursuits. GROENING has had a hit with "THE SIMPSONS," but BARTLETT's career has not yet taken off.)_

**BARTLETT: **Groening.

**GROENING: **Call me Matt. I may be more successful than you, but I am your equal because my sister Lisa is your lovely wife.

**BARTLETT:** Only I can call her lovely.

**GROENING: **See? You appear to have authority problems, Craig. Some sort of oppositional defiant disorder (or ODD, if you like acronyms). _(he spontaneously begins humming the Pledge of Allegiance.) _

**BARTLETT: **I'm just a jealous guy.

**GROENING: **So was John Lennon. Although to be honest, I prefer the works of Don Van Vliet.

**BARTLETT: **Don Van Vliet? Isn't that the chick from the Manson Clan?

**GROENING: **No, that was Leslie Van Houten. Funnily, one of our writers, David Silverman, decided to make Milhouse, you know, the awkward blue-haired kid on our show—David wanted Milhouse's last name to be Van Houten. I was not happy with David's decision though, because I wanted Milhouse's last name to be Isnotameme from day one.

**BARTLETT: **Isnotameme? Is that Icelandic? I went to elementary school with a couple Icelandic kids. One of them took me into the boy's restroom one afternoon only to rub his foreskin against mine.

**GROENING: **Ewww, Icelanders are weird that way. Nah, it's Norwegian. My mum's Norwegian, me dad's Germanic, which is why my last name rhymes with "straining" instead of "stoning" and why I hate all the Jewish characters on my show, especially Dolph.

**BARTLETT: **That wasn't funny in the slightest. Only offensive!

**GROENING: **Well, as me mum did say when I was a wee boy, "the least funny ethnicities in the entire world be German and Norwegian."

**BARTLETT: **Aren't Norwegians the blokes who invented them fnords?

**GROENING: **Fjords, Craig. They're called fjords.

**BARTLETT: **I coulda sworn they were known as fnords.

**GROENING: **You swore wrong, Bartmouth. "Fnord" is a word often associated with the _Principia Discordia_, although it has been found in more mainstream lit like _The Illuminatus! Trilogy. _"Fjords," on the other hand, are the magnum opus of Slartibartfast, the formerly foul-named cast member of _The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy._

**BARTLETT: **You read too much science fiction.

**GROENING: **That's why whenever the popular toon I've got on the air right now starts to falter, I'll introduce the airwaves to a science fiction toon! It's going to be called "_Future Shock_."

**BARTLETT: **That's a pretty lousy title. Even Joe Murray topped it on _Rocko's_, did you see that one? "Future Shlock," it was called.

**GROENING: **"_Future Shock_" is but a working title, Craig.

**BARTLETT: **_**(sarcastically) **_Oh, I'm so sorry, Groening. You f—

**GROENING: **Jesus, Craig. Enough with the inequality razzmatazz. Call me "Matt," or get the hell out of my studio.

**BARTLETT: **_Your _studio? This is _my _house!

**GROENING: **Yeah, I recently relocated my studio to my sister's house. So what?

**BARTLETT: **Well, maybe next time you relocate your friggin' studio, you could let the peoples livin' in the house know what's goin' on! Every time me n' the missus go to sleepins, all this noise stuff be comin' from upstairs. Boom boom boom! Freakin' Bart Simpson, "ay caramba" n' shit, you know what I'm sayin'? That's not even your ground, man! Your work doesn't include you voicin' Barty Simpson, y'hear? That's Miss Nancy Cartwright's role, you got that?

**GROENING: **I got that, Craig. I'm just working overtime.

**BARTLETT: **Yeah, in my fuggin' house! I'm not rich yet so I can't afford a house big enough to fit a charming young Seattle couple and a hotshot Portland-bred cartoonist. Why don't you go back to the Evergreen State University, ya lousy bum? Fuckin' gradeless hippie-drippy mumbo jumbo n' shit, ya got me?

**GROENING: **I'll leave, but then you won't hear all the great new ideas I have for your show.

**BARTLETT: **_Hey Arnold? _You got ideas for fuckin' _Hey Arnold? _What are they, like characters n' shit?

**GROENING: **Yeah, I got this guy, I call him Nick. Total Sicilian-looking doofus, with long brown ponytail hair and a cigar. I like cigars. Like 'em a lot. Always did. Nickelodeon might freak out and shit on the cigar, but my channel, FOX, they don't give a shit about what kinda doobs the yellow men be smoking. In fact, the other day, Waylon Smithers, ya know, pinko fruity-type yellowman, works for Burns n' shit—Smithers was havin' a dream, ya see, and Burns was like flyin' out of the window, he got a window in his bachelor pad, ya hear, and Burns just lands on Smithers' lap and shit. One of our animators, Korean fucker, the whole South Korean type deal, he added a boner, an erection type deal to Smithers, and the censors didn't get pissed or nothin'. They the anti-Nickelodeons, ya get where I'm comin' from, ya hear?

**BARTLETT: **Nick, you said? What's his last name? Nick who, I mean?

**GROENING: **Yeah, I was hanging out in Little Italy last summer, smokin' one of those fancy type cigars that I dig so very very much, when I chanced upon this place, it had the craziest pastas. Pastas like you'd never believe! Fuckin' Dino's spumoni was good and all, but man, you gotta taste the vermicelli at this place! Fuckin' grade A vermicelli, the place had. Anyways, I thought it might be funny n' shit if you know, Nick, the Nickster, as one of my kids, the young one, Abe, was callin' him—Nick's last name should be Vermicelli, you got that?

**BARTLETT: **Vermicelli. It has a nice ring to it, I'll give it that. I've got so many characters I'm working on now, that I can't yet fathom how a certain Nick Vermicelli cat's gonna suddenly appear. I mean, I got Arnold Shortman, Harold Berman, Helga Pataki, Gerald Johannsen, you got my drift? Lots o' characters, ya hear me now?

**GROENING: **I hear ya loud n' clear, captain. Alls I'm sayin' is that the Nickelodeon type fellows are desperately in need of some edge. _Ren and Stimpy_, that was edgy, but now it's stale. _Rocko's Modern Life_, same deal. Was edgy, was incredibly edgy at one point, but is petering out like a bad simile. Your little Mickey Mouse network—it's needing edge! Nick Vermicelli, he's that edge.

**BARTLETT: **But, I don't think you get it. I have edgy characters to work with already. Like Oskar! Oskar freakin' Kokoshka, Polish motherfucker, edgy as the Ace of Spades. He's got more edge in him than Madonna on a bad day.

**GROENING: **Oo-wee! I like the sound of that! Well, I'd better be leaving for a cartooning conference, but if you ever need another character, an edgy Sicilian type, remember Nick Vermicelli, at the high school.

**BARTLETT: **At the high school? These kids on the show I'm working on, they're elementary schoolers. Haven't even hit the fifth grade. They're not the types you be findin' around a freakin' high school.

**GROENING: **They can visit! Like, maybe that black kid you were workin' on, his big brother's a high school student, and they're touring big bro's school, and look who it is, Mr. Nick Vermicelli, at the high school.

**BARTLETT: **He seems more like a fellow who'd associate with Big Bob Pataki, you know, Helga's dad, beeper sellin' motherfucker.

**GROENING: **Oh shit, I really am late. See ya later, Craig.

**BARTLETT: **Catch ya later, Groening!

**GROENING: **_(groans)_

**BARTLETT: **Ha ha ha, Groening's groaning.

_(they do not move)_


End file.
